Curbing Cruisers : Congestion: Take a summer night, a car and youthful exuberance and you have cruising. The aimless car rides are pure Americana, but it continues to drive many neighborhoods crazy.

For most drivers, being wedged in a crush of cars, inhaling exhaust and inching a path through a parking lot is not the most enjoyable way to spend a Friday night. But by the looks of it, Marty Yazzie was having the time of his life.

Loud rap music blasted from a bank of speakers in the cab of Yazzie’s souped-up 1987 Toyota King Cab. Nodding his head to the beat, the 21-year-old Westminster machinist turned to his passenger, smiled, and said, “If I turned the amp up a little bit more, it would make our hair stand up.”

“Yeah, this is the place,” Yazzie said. “Everybody knows that’s the place to go--Balboa--to show off your car.”

This is cruising, Newport Beach style.

Like the main streets of towns across the country, by 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, the west end of Balboa Boulevard echoes with the sounds of expensive car stereos, screams and laughter. The cacophony is testimony to hundreds of young adults from all over the county who make the weekend pilgrimage to queue up for hours on the peninsula’s main drag.

Residents say it can be a real mess. When the cruisers are out in force, a normally quick trip from Coast Highway down to Balboa Pier can seem like a millennium. Businesses say the excessive traffic drives away customers. And city and police officials, responding to complaints, say they are concerned about problems associated with large crowds and alcohol--noise, litter and fights.

Cruising is not new to Newport, and police say this summer will not be much different despite a host of laws against it. In 1984, the City Council banned the warm-weather ritual in an ordinance allowing police to cite anyone repeatedly driving along city streets.

The ordinance proved difficult to enforce and, in 1986, working with residents and businesses, police tried a new tactic and began a checkpoint program that prohibits anyone except residents and those with business or pleasure destinations from driving past 15th Street on the peninsula when traffic is heavy.

But the procession of cruisers keeps coming. This summer, the newest hot spot for congregating teens is a large parking lot at the corner of 32nd Street and Newport Boulevard. Nearby residents have complained to police about the noise, trash and broken glass. The William J. Cagney Trust, which owns the property, also has hired a private security company to patrol the lot.

Police say they are cracking down, keeping an eye out for alcohol and vandalism and deploying a foot patrol to walk the area on Friday and Saturday nights. So far, their efforts have had limited success.

Although police don’t keep statistics on citations complaints in the area, crowds continue to get bigger, Sgt. Andy Gonis says.

“There’s a zoo going on out there,” said Demetre Ermacoff, manager of Port’s Pharmacy in Lucky’s plaza on 32nd Street, who first noticed the problem one warm afternoon in February. As a result, he said, he is considering dropping his usually late seasonal hours because of inconvenience to customers.

Tammy Sawards, who manages a dry cleaners in the plaza, said she has heard complaints from other area businesses that they lose patrons with the night-time crowds.

“A lot of the customers don’t want to come down,” Sawards said. “A lot of people don’t want to come near this place because of the kids . . . (they would) just as soon go somewhere else.”

And Rod Volk, a resident who lives across the street, complains that those hanging out remain on the streets until 3 a.m.

“Littering is a big problem. They come and dump their beer cans in the patio area in front of my house . . . but it’s not to the point that I’m pulling my hair out,” said Volk, who has lived in the area for the past two years. “I think the biggest problem is the kids running up and down the street at 2, 2:30, 3 o’clock in the morning.”

Cruising was fashionable before the days of fast food and drive-ins. In Orange County over the past few years, several other cities have battled traffic problems created by cruising. In Anaheim, police use a strict curfew prohibiting teens from being out on the street past 10 p.m. In Santa Ana, where drivers disturb neighbors with loud music, littering and drug dealing, cruising was banned in an ordinance passed last November.

But solutions such as the traffic checkpoint and letting property owners police their own lots have been more effective, said Newport Beach Police Lt. Tim Newman. The signs of success are everywhere.

Checkpoint hours have been reduced from five to three since cruisers have gotten the word about the enforcement effort, Gonis said. Dayna Pettit, president of the Balboa Peninsula Point Assn., a group that represents residents who live near the tip of the peninsula, says the residents-only lane has been a great relief.

But Gonis and others admit that while the checkpoint has relieved congestion, the result has been that the cruisers have migrated up the peninsula, off public streets and onto private property.

Keith Lempka, 23, a Fountain Valley plumber who’s been cruising Newport Beach for the last five years, says that since the 15th Street checks began, driving down the boulevard toward the Balboa Pier has lost its appeal.

“There’s no reason to go down there anymore,” Lempka said. “Why sit in traffic for 45 minutes to an hour just to get turned around? If you want to do that, why don’t you go down and sit on the (Riverside Freeway) at 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon?”

But, he adds, cruising Newport is still the thing to do on a weekend night.

As a result, cruisers have searched for other places where they can see and be seen. Numerous parking lots in the city became hangouts. A plaza with a late-night Jack-in-the-Box restaurant at the corner of Coast Highway and Balboa Boulevard was a popular meeting place until it was also roped off by private security guards.

The Lucky Plaza, no stranger to cruisers in the past, seems to be again a hot spot, and roping-off methods are now being tried there by its owners. The large lot straddles Newport and Balboa boulevards and was being used by cruisers as a throughway between the two streets until recently.

Gonis says that, with luck, the current blockading methods in the Lucky lot may send the cruisers moving on again.

“Once a situation in that parking lot is controlled . . . with cooperation of all involved parties . . . hopefully the cruisers that are coming down here will go elsewhere,” Gonis said. But Carl Bauer of Dana Point and a cruising veteran figures the Lucky lot will remain home for the cruisers for a while.

“Two years ago we were down at Jack-in-the-Box. Three years ago we were here (by the Carl’s Jr. at 32nd and Balboa). Four years ago we were down in Balboa. We’ll just go someplace else,” Bauer said. “If someone takes the initiative and moves someplace else, we’ll follow. But I think this is it.”